I'm not sure I agree with that parallel. ME was the end of a dead codeline, while a lot of what's good about 7 could not exist without Vista (example: the improved security model). Vista was just bitter medicine.
I think your opinion touches on a slightly deeper analysis than I intended. I'm only speaking about how it's use, acceptance and crappiness will be remembered, not the technological reasons behind it.
Once you change it to the old-style theme, remove the nag screens, and delete the junk that comes pre-installed on most comps, Vista is actually quite decent.
If MS had just shipped without the nag screens and with a lightweight desktop theme, I think the reception would have been very different. That's not to say that it's the best OS, but it could have been a business success.
The tiny effect of the UAC being enabled by default has, in my opinion, snowballed to destroy Microsoft's reputation and profits. A one bit difference in the OS will hurt their bottom line for years to come.
I think there's a bit more to it than that. For example they hurt themselves enormously by breaking the driver model. I have a bunch of useless devices sitting all around me right now for which there are no Vista drivers and never will be. For that reason alone I don't recommend Vista to any of my friends because I know they probably have printers, scanners, cameras, who-knows-what that is never going to work again if they install it.
If that's what happens to the company in one of the worst economies in decades, and they have an OS that has been repeatedly panned.... Wow. I wonder what the company is going to do when the economy does well.
> Once you change it to the old-style theme, remove the nag screens, and delete the junk that comes pre-installed on most comps, Vista is actually quite decent.
The background indexing was also a disaster. What an idea. Make my new computer useless for several days so that some searches that I'll never do will be faster.
>Once you change it to the old-style theme, remove the nag screens, and delete the junk that comes pre-installed on most comps, Vista is actually quite decent.
I have to agree... a friend of mine has been using the public beta and, after tinkering with it for a while, I found it to be a very functional, rather natural step for Windows.
By my account, Windows 7 hype is really annoying. They graft on a clone of Kicker and everyone swoons, wtf? There's no reason to believe it'll do any better than Vista that I've seen.
I think Windows 7 will be a success, and Vista will be remembered much as Windows ME has been, as a short lived inferior product that nobody wanted.